Contemporary connections: Beloved

For this section, I will be focusing on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the immigration issues in America 2017. To begin, let’s look at the BLM movement. According to Russell Rickford, an assistant professor of History at Cornell University, BLM is a new take on racial prejudices against African-Americans. It started in 2015, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman and became the main slogan of the riots in Ferguson, MO. Their main mission is to make everyone see that a “black life” is worth just as much as anyone else's. That means they are equal socially and legally. The immigration issues of 2017 are a form of racial prejudice against a minority group, but instead of it being African-Americans, it’s against anyone from Mexico, Central or Latin America, or anyone from the Middle East. The difference between these two groups is basically just where they come from: the problem with our immigration system is that America does not want to let anyone in who is not white, and as a result, we are denying access to our country. Refugees, not immigrants, were fleeing from Middle Eastern countries like Syria because their government was killing massive amounts of people, and America did not wish to let them in because the “Middle East is just full of terrorists.” The same type of treatment is given to those trying to come up from Mexico to find a better life in America; We shut them out and say that they are all “rapists and murderers”. In both instances, children are dying due to nerve gas attacks and having their families murdered in front of them, and are just wishing to flee to a better life where the are safe, but Americans “feel threatened by immigrants”. The correlation between these two events is cultural inequality for different people of color, and because of this, there being blatant aggression and violence toward these other groups. The problem isn’t even based on real issues like terrorism or statistics of crime, but rather just a fear stemming from generations of validated racism from white americans. Along with that, our government has made it abundantly easy to view anyone of color as a threat to white society. This prejudice and hate has become imbedded in our culture, and has affected the lives of a majority of our population. In Liberals, Conservatives and Latin America: How the Ideology Divides Americans over Immigration and Foreign Aid, Peter Hays Gries of the University of oklahoma looks into this issue focusing on latin american immigration. His main discussion looks at the ravine that separates liberals and conservatives on the issue of immigration and foreign aid. His research shows that liberals are much warmer to the idea of open, or rather, much more inclusive immigration system, where conservatives want to focuses on the issues in our country and don’t really want anyone else here. He believes that the racial issue for conservatives has to do with white domination and christian domination. Gries states “First, when it comes to general warmth toward Latin American countries, among whites it is differing attitudes toward proper race relations that matter most. Of our four ideological dimensions, only social dominance orientation is associated with feelings toward three Latin American countries, and differing liberal and conservative moralities of compassion and authority undergird this ideological cleavage. Second, white conservative preferences for tougher Mexico border policies are partially explained by white conservatives' greater average social dominance, but also by their greater average cultural traditionalism. The survey data reveal that cultural conservatives fear the impact of Mexican immigration on Christian values and a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) American national identity more than cultural liberals do.” (pg. 24) However, when explaining why liberals feel differently, he states “Our 2011 survey data thus suggest that on average liberals feel greater compassion for the suffering of Hispanic immigrants, contributing to their greater opposition to social dominance and desire for a more relaxed border policy.” (pg 35) So, how does this connect to our readings? I would argue that both of these issues, especially the BLM movement, exist because some of the “american” ideologies rely on repression of other cultures to exert “american” dominance. This was central to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Even though Stowe wanted to show the issue of slavery as morally wrong for white christians, she had to show us the effects of repression on slaves to get her point across. We can also see the effects of this repression in Beloved, as Morrison shows us the deep psychological effects social repression had on the minds of former slaves. Although the issues of 2017 are not as “in your face” as slavery was, we still see how these racial prejudices are still deeply embedded in not only our social attitudes, but in our legal system and government itself. They exist in the mass incarceration of African american citizens and deportation due to the inability to feasibly obtain legality for immigrants. We need to use these novels and other similar stories to see how systematic repression can destroy the lives of the oppressed